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Fear of framing

I mentioned the Nisbet and Mooney Policy Forum in Science on Friday. I've seen a couple of posts reacting to their article since then, and both of them make points I was going to make until I saw that the authors of those posts (a) made the points first, (b) made the points better, and (c) have more experience (and credibility) in science communication than I do.

So let me just point out two things:

Framing does not mean speaking in sound bites. It means organizing your material in a way that will make it interesting, accessible, and convincing to your audience. See Orac's post for details.

In communicating through the media, journalists largely determine the frames.Scientists need to educate journalists as much as the general public. It's journalists who determine how the issues are framed. See gavin's post for a recent example based on interviews he gave surrounding the release of the IPCC working group II summary report.

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In early April Matt Nisbet and Chris Mooney published a policy forum piece in Science entitled “Framing science”, causing quite a furor in the blogosphere. The debate how now reached the pages of Science in the form of a series... Read More